CHS in a March 2 letter sent by Manhattan-based law firm Kirkland & Ellis listed improper claims regarding cardiac care and nursing on the North Shore-LIJ, Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine and NuHealth websites.

The Rockville Center-based system said the errors, including statements indicating North Shore University Hospital was being singled out by U.S. News & World Report for cardiology and surgery, constitute false advertising.

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“North Shore-LLIJ’s false claims of professional superiority are a bid to seize market share and dominate the highly competitive health care market on Long Island, because U.S. News ratings are highly regarded by consumers and influence their choices every day,” CHS spokesman Christine Hendriks said

North Shore-LIJ responded on March 8, thanking Catholic Health Services for bringing the information to its attention and saying it had removed the statements.

“The whole issue could have been resolved with a simple phone call to say, ‘You have some outdated information on your website. We want you to take it down.’ And we would have done so,” North Shore-LIJ spokesman Terry Lynam said. “I’m sure virtually every organization has content on its website that’s out of date. That’s simply the case here. We have 10,000 pages of content on the North Shore-LIJ.com website.”

But CHS said the various sites falsely identified North Shore-LIJ as the only Long Island hospital ranked among the top hospitals for cardiology and heart surgery by U.S. News and World Report.

U.S. News hasn’t ranked North Shore University Hospital in that category since 2005, while St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, run by Catholic Health Services, was ranked 25th in the nation for cardiology and heart surgery in 2011.

“Such false and misleading statements may subject each of your institutions to liability for, among other things, false advertising and unfair competition under federal and state law, and require immediate correction and remediation,” Kirkland & Ellis wrote in its letter.

North Shore-LIJ on its website also had indicated that North Shore University and Huntington hospitals were the only ones on Long Island to receive Magnet Designation for Nursing Excellence.

St. Francis and Good Samaritan also received a magnet designation from the American Nursing Credentialing Center’s Magnet Recognition Program in 2006 and 2011.

“The inescapable conclusion is that you have deliberately made these false and misleading statements in an effort to inflate your respective reputations in the area of cardiac services, heart surgery and nursing, either directly or by association,” the attorneys wrote.

But Lynam said the information, which he said was correct when it went online, wasn’t used in advertising or prominently displayed on websites.

“The notion that it’s false advertising?” he said. “This was accurate at the time it was posted.”

While North Shore-LIJ says it has removed the statements, CHS wants the system to post corrections on the pages that included errors.

CHS also said North Shore-LIJ should forward inaccurate comments attributed to physicians at the system to the Office of Professional Medical Conduct.

“It was brought to our attention. We dealt with it immediately. We took the stuff down. The fact that it was not removed was an oversight,” Lynam said. “As far as we’re concerned, the matter’s closed. If they want to sue, that’s their prerogative.”